Virender Sehwag and Cricket’s Existential Anxiety

Abstract

The article is in the nature of a personal interpretation of the illustrious career of former Indian batsman Virender Sehwag. Known for his swashbuckling stroke play, he found his niche at the top of the famed Test batting line up that once boasted of the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman and Saurav Ganguly, despite unanimous opinion of critics about the glaring deficiencies in his batting technique. His rather inconsistent returns in limited overs cricket run counter to the conventional wisdom that associates the ‘copybook style’ of batting with greater successes in the longest format of the sport. The article is less of an attempt to a statistical analysis of the batsman for reaching a quantitative explanation for the said ‘anomaly’ in his performances, and more of an enquiry into his ‘inner world’ as a batsman, offering a metaphorical insight into the existential dichotomy of the longer and shorter formats of cricket. The author draws from the perspective of Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard on anxiety and that of American anthropologist Ernest Becker on neurosis, reflecting on the various manifestations of despair that haunt batsmen across formats, as a window to Sehwag’s unique defences in dealing with the anxieties at the batting crease. In this quest, the author expresses concerns about the future of the game in the backdrop of the slippery slope of the age-old existential dilemma facing the governing body of the sport in its bid to go truly global.